Startup Grind - Michael Dermer

Michael is a serial entrepreneur, speaker, lawyer and founder/author of The Lonely Entrepreneur. The Lonely Entrepreneur® is a methodology that helps entrepreneurs with the one issue we all face – the struggle. It empowers entrepreneurs to thrive in the pressure, chaos and burden of being an entrepreneur by changing our perspective from those that stifle our progress to those that empower us to thrive. The Lonely Entrepreneur methodology addresses our perspectives onthe many personal and business issues we face that prevent us from making progress.

The Lonely Entrepreneurmethodology was discovered from the perfect storm Michael faced at IncentOne. He left a promising law career with a prestigious New York law firm to fix the healthcare system by starting IncentOne – the first company to provide financial rewards for healthy behavior. After bootstrapping for a decade, they received a large private equity investment on October 15, 2008. It should have been a time for celebration. Then the financial crisis hit. Ten years were gone in ten days. Bankrupt customers. Investment gone. Credit gone. Family dollars at risk. Angry investors. Family relationships on the brink. It would take two years of working 24 hours a day to save what took ten years to build. Intense is an understatement. The perfect storm.

It was doomed. Or was it? Today, health rewards are everywhere, Michael sold IncentOne to industry innovator Welltok and is credited with creating the health rewards industry. What resulted was not only a business success, but perhaps more importantly the discovery of a unique method on how to thrive under the pressure, chaos and burden of being the entrepreneur. The Lonely Entrepreneur was born.